May 19th, 2009 by DrRich in Better Health Network, Health Policy
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DrRich has been around long enough to remember the sequence of events that accompanied the collapse of healthcare reform under the Clintons in 1993 – 1994. (Heck, he has been around long enough to remember Nixon’s plans for healthcare reform, which drowned in Watergate.) When President Clinton was inaugurated, everyone agreed that the American healthcare system was in a state of crisis (e.g., spending levels could not be sustained, there were too many uninsured, there was too much waste and inefficiency, etc., etc.), and that the time for fundamental reform had finally arrived. We had a fresh, dynamic, young President with new ideas and with a solid majority in both houses of Congress, and he was armed with polls showing that the people were in favor of fundamental reform.
Accordingly, when Mrs. Clinton put together her working groups to devise a reform plan, she initially had the enthusiastic participation of numerous interest groups within the healthcare industry – notably including the insurance companies, physician groups, and drug and medical device companies.
But when she finally produced her plan – a disturbingly heavy tome filled with frightening details – everybody was horrified with at least some of the stuff they found there. Most of the big interest groups turned on her – most notably, the insurance industry, which then launched the famous Harry and Louise commercials to scare the people about government healthcare. The people, now duly scared, called their congresspersons, who (despite the Democrat majority) ended up sending Mrs. Clinton’s healthcare reform to a crushing and humiliating defeat. And the Republicans were able to capitalize on the “near miss” of the Clinton’s brazen attempt at socialism, and in 1994 ushered in 12 years of a Republican majority in both houses of Congress.
Obviously, for those Republicans and other observers who abhor Mr. Obama’s plans for healthcare reform, it is relatively easy to see parallels between what happened in the early 1990s, and what appears to be shaping up now. Those parallels, and the subsequent ignominious defeat of the Clinton plan, are the only things keeping these sorry individuals from donning sackcloth, heaping ashes upon their heads, and engaging in public self-flagellation.
So, perhaps, for such outsiders the spectacle of the major private healthcare interests this week throwing in with the Obama administration will be seen as one more sign from the gods that the parallels of 1994 are falling into place.
But they are wrong.
There are at least three important differences between the enthusiastic participation of private interests in Mrs. Clinton’s working groups on healthcare reform, and the action taken this week by representatives of insurers, doctors, drug companies, hospitals, and medical device manufacturers to pledge their undying support for President Obama’s efforts at healthcare reform.
First, in 1993 the private interests were powerful and confident. They participated in the process because they felt they could control it. It turned out they were wrong, of course – the only one who has been able to out-maneuver the Clintons is Mr. Obama – and the plan Mrs. Clinton finally produced (despite all the “input” from diverse private interests) really was a blueprint for a full government takeover of healthcare, all spelled out and wrapped with a bow. But because the private interests were powerful and confident in those days, once they figured out what the Clintons actually had in mind they were able to scuttle healthcare reform entirely.
In contrast, today the private interests have come to the table not out of strength, but out of weakness. They come not as partners in negotiation, but as vanquished foes. They come to Obama as the Carthaginians came to the Romans after the second Punic war, suing for peace, begging for terms, offering massive tribute (in this case, $2 trillion) in exchange for being permitted to eke out a meager survival, at the edge of the desert. (DrRich wonders whether the insurance companies and their friends remember the third Punic war. Surely they must know that somewhere in Congress is another Cato the Elder, ending every speech with the words, “The insurance industry must be destroyed,” and that at some point their remaining, puny base of operation will be completely sacked, and their mission statements sown with salt.)
Second, whereas Mrs. Clinton was a major policy wonk who reveled in providing a fully-fleshed-out and exquisitely detailed set of plans for healthcare reform – thus giving her foes sufficient ammunition not only to defeat her reform plan, but also to banish the Democratic Party to the wilderness for three election cycles – Mr. Obama is not. His reform plan will be bare-bones – merely an outline, more-or-less a statement of principles. There will be nothing to attack, since there will be no details, and little will be spelled out. (Implementing the plan will be left to unelected bureaucrats and regulators, who are always happy to produce prodigious amounts of undecipherable and self-contradictory detail.) This time, at least prior to its actual implementation, critics of the reform plan will be left trying to attack a phantom.
And third, this time there is no Plan B.
In 1994, once the private interests had scuttled the Clinton healthcare plan, they immediately offered an alternative. They came to us and they said: “Citizens! We have just now dodged a bullet! Thanks to us insurance companies, doctors, drug companies and other patriots, the frightening socialist machinations of the Clintons have been defeated, and the Evil Ones have been reduced to embracing our agenda of tax reform and welfare reform as if it were their own. But where does this leave our healthcare system? We stand now between Scylla and Charybdis, between the spectre of socialized healthcare on one hand, and the continued profligacy of traditional fee-for-service on the other, and we cannot survive either.
“But here,” they continued, “is a third way. A painless way, an American way, based on the principles of managed care, open markets, and free enterprise. Let healthcare become a business, like any other business, and let the natural efficiencies of the marketplace find ways to cut costs and improve quality, and with minimal government intervention.”
And thus we were launched into an era of managed care run by HMOs and other similar creatures of the insurance industry. And over the past 15 years, while managed care has utterly failed to produce any of the things it promised, it has not been for a lack of trying. They indeed have tried numerous things to control spending, from the reasonable-sounding to the absurd to the frankly murderous, and despite all their strenuous efforts the healthcare system remains a morass of confusion, waste, and inefficiency, and its costs are many times what they were in 1994.
To say it another way, the private concerns, this time, have shot their wad. They are entirely bereft of ideas. They know not what to do.
And that’s why they have now fully abandoned their old allies, the Republicans (who are off somewhere – one knows not where – muttering to each other about the efficiencies of the marketplace, and wondering why nobody is listening to them). The last thing the insurance industry wants to hear today is that the burden of figuring out how to control healthcare costs belongs to them. They’ve tried everything they know and have failed, and they are desperately seeking terms for surrender.
So there is no Plan B this time. As of this week, the private interests have formally and publicly admitted they don’t have a clue. They’re throwing in with President Obama, despite the fact that they have no leverage with him whatsoever, not because they believe in his reform plans (which have not even been described in their most skeletal form), but because there is no place else for them to go.
And so, the last obstruction to healthcare reform has been removed. The path – the only path – is clear. If we fail to get comprehensive healthcare reform now, it can only be for one reason. It can only be because Mr. Obama and the Democrats, looking down that wide open road, will be unable to avoid seeing where it leads, and will decide that they do not want to be the administration or the party that finally has to begin saying the “R” word in public.
To turn away from healthcare reform now, when the way seems so clear, would be a crushing blow to them, and would likely not be politically survivable. But to go on will likely force them to begin speaking a truth – that rationing is unavoidable – whose name is more taboo than ever was the name of Yahweh. And every high priest of the ruling class knows that even hinting about healthcare rationing is political suicide.
But still, there it is. There is no Plan B.
Talk about Sylla and Charybdis.
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
May 15th, 2009 by DrRich in Health Policy
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DrRich’s valued colleague R. W. Donnell, who writes Notes From Dr. RW, has responded to a recent post in which DrRich bravely came out in favor of Comparative Effectiveness Research, even at the cost (DrRich asserted) of alienating the majority of the more conservative-leaning components of his readership.
Dr. RW, noting DrRich’s claim that conservatives have laid out a formal policy of opposition to CER, says:
“OK, stop. Where are these people, conservatives or those of any ilk, who have taken a position against CER? Dr. Rich cites groups who are skeptical and very concerned about the new political agenda for CER, not CER itself.”
Dr. RW is, of course, correct. Research that compares the relative effectiveness of medical procedures or treatments is not only inherently a very good thing, but also is a form of research that has a long and proud history. Healthcare would be an even more dire activity than it is today without the large body of research that guides physicians in making recommendations to their patients when more than one option is available. So yes, comparative effectiveness research is obviously a valuable and time-honored endeavor, and for anyone (conservatives or anyone else) to come out against it would be akin to coming out against babies, or bunnies. (Though, as one whose effort to grow vegetables has been severely challenged each year by a pride of aggressive rabbits, DrRich, as it happens, is indeed against bunnies.)
So, to reiterate, neither conservatives nor anyone else are really against comparative effectiveness research, just as Dr. RW asserts.
What they are against is Comparative Effectiveness Research. They are against a new government bureaucracy that sets the CER agenda, whose stated goal is to create a more efficient and less expensive healthcare system, and that will have the authority to determine what gets reimbursed and what doesn’t.
Dr. RW has made it plain that he is not confused about the following point, but many are: There is a difference between comparative effectiveness research (whose unambiguous goal is to compare the clinical effectiveness among different treatment options, so as to offer physicians objective guidance in making clinical decisions, and which is as unassailable as babies and bunnies), and Comparative Effectiveness Research (which is to be operated by a new government bureaucracy, whose agenda regarding what kind of effectiveness is actually to be compared is intentionally ambiguous).
The ambiguity of CER (as compared to cer) was made clear recently when Peter Orszag testified on behalf of the administration before the Senate Finance Committee. When queried by skeptical Republicans on the ultimate goal of the proposed CER board, Mr. Orszag was evasive. Specifically, when asked by Senator Kyle (R-Arizona) whether the CER board would be empowered to make decisions on which medical services will be reimbursed, Mr. Orszag finally replied, “Not at this point,” a reply which did not alleviate the suspicions of the minority party.
To state the ambiguity more plainly, it is clear that while the CER board will mainly be concerned about comparing “cost effectiveness” (which is the only way they can potentially achieve their main goal of reducing healthcare costs), the only kind of effectiveness they are willing to discuss publicly is “clinical effectiveness.”
This studied ambiguity allows proponents of the new government plan to paint opponents of the CER board as being against the “babies and bunnies” form of comparative effectiveness research, and thus reveal those nay-sayers as being beneath contempt, unworthy of anyone’s attention. Meanwhile they will be free to advance their real “cost effectiveness” agenda.
DrRich agrees with conservatives that this kind of deceptive ambiguity is indeed contemptible. But really, it is no more contemptible than the thousands of other forms of covert healthcare rationing we see all around us. (Covert rationing inherently relies on ambiguity – saying we’re doing one thing while all the time we’re doing another.)
Having tried to clarify this distinction between cer and CER, DrRich will now repeat that his prior post was not merely to express support for the “babies and bunnies” variety. As Dr. RW points out, everybody is in favor of that kind of comparative effectiveness research.
Rather – and this is where he further jeopardizes his continued tolerance by his conservative readers – DrRich is offering his support to the other kind of CER, the kind described in the stimulus bill, which (though the administration will not say it publicly) will undoubtedly use comparative effectiveness research to perform cost effectiveness calculations, then coerce physicians, through one form of federal subterfuge and intimidation or another, to employ the least expensive therapies. The government bureaucrats, just as they are doing today but with less muscle, will shout “quality” while enforcing “cost.”
DrRich supports this kind of CER not because it is a good thing – it decidedly is not. He supports it because here is a form of covert rationing that will at last effect everyone, and will be so blatant that after a time even us Americans will no longer be able to ignore it, try as we might. DrRich believes that relatively soon, we would notice that here is a cadre of unelected bureaucrats rationing our healthcare – determining which of us lives and dies – through some opaque process, and lying to us about it the whole time. He believes this to be the pathway most likely to get the American people to finally face the fact of healthcare rationing, and to goad them into an open debate on the best and least harmful way to accomplish it.
Go ahead. Call him a cock-eyed optimist.
*This blog post was originally published at The Covert Rationing Blog*
March 10th, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Policy
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I attended a conference entitled, “Lessons From Abroad for Health Reform in the U.S.” at the Kaiser Family Foundation on March 9th in Washington DC. The event was sponsored by the Galen Institute and the International Policy Network, both of whom are politically rightward-leaning non-profit organizations.
I wasn’t sure what to expect from the conference, and assumed that speakers would offer a blend of pluses and minuses culled from Canadian and European healthcare reform experiences. I have to say that the pluses were hard to come by – and that the minuses were so provocative that I have decided to repeat them here for you, and let you make what you will of them.
Switzerland – Lessons About Insurance Mandates
Dr. Alphonse Crespo, an orthopedic surgeon who practices in Lausanne, Switzerland, described what sounded like the utter decimation of a perfectly good healthcare system. He said that in the 1960s Swiss healthcare was decentralized and quality-oriented. The government provided subsidies for health insurance for the poor, and subsidized public hospitals who took care of the poor and/or uninsured at a 50% rate. Overall, according to Dr. Crespo, Swiss healthcare was efficient, effective, and had high patient satisfaction ratings.
In 1994, socialism came into vogue and reformers called for a redistributive model of healthcare, with centralization of infrastructure and electronic medical records systems that would be compatible with those in use by other European countries. Mandatory insurance was introduced, which shifted disproportionate power to third party payors. The payors focused primarily on cost containment measures and profitability, rather than expanding access to quality care. Regional hospitals were forced to merge with larger ones or else shut down. Wait times increased, lengths of stay decreased, and there was an increase in “critical incidents” (i.e. medical errors) by 40%.
In 2002 the health insurers decided that “more doctors result in higher costs” and successfully lobbied for a cap on the total number of physician licenses, so that in order to practice medicine, a physician would need to take over the practice of a retiring physician or one who died.
In 2008, the third party payors attempted to legislate their ability to decide which physicians could practice within the healthcare system, and which would be excluded from coverage. This did not sit well with patients, and they voted for “freedom of choice” in a referendum on the issue. Fortunately, they blocked the insurer move to ban certain physicians from insurance coverage. Unfortunately, the insurers succeeded in forcing a reduction in reimbursement for basic laboratory testing by 20%, thus forcing physicians to close their labs and send samples to a centralized location. Apparently physicians are planning to strike in Lausanne and Bern next week over this issue.
Dr. Crespo argued that the unforeseen consequence of the move to compulsory insurance was the emergence of a powerful cartel of health insurers without any apparent cost savings, and a measurable decrease in care quality. In fact, Switzerland’s healthcare system rapidly plummeted from 4th place in the Euro Health Consumer Index, to 8th place over the course of a few short years.
He concludes:
“Once cartels have entrenched themselves, there is no easy way to dislodge them. Americans should think twice before opting for compulsory insurance, unless they believe that cartelized and rationed healthcare is really in the best interest of patients.”
**You may view materials from Dr. Crespo’s lecture here.**
In my next post I’ll review what the Canadians had to say about their healthcare system.
March 2nd, 2009 by Dr. Val Jones in Health Policy, Opinion, Quackery Exposed
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I’ve been blogging a lot recently about the problems caused by health policy makers who don’t appear to understand medicine or science. I’ve also been lamenting the relative lack of physician input at the highest level of health reform. But today I’d like to present a prime example of the perfect storm in health policy: when willfulness, ignorance, and magical thinking combine to push an agenda despite billions of tax payer research dollars proving the futility of such efforts.
In this video, Senator Tom Harkin describes the impetus behind the creation of the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Harkin suggests that he single-handedly introduced legislation in 1992 that created the Office of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This office paved the way for an entire new branch of research at NIH devoted to exploring the potential validity of non-science based medical practices such as homeopathy, acupuncture, traditional Chinese medicine, energy healing, meditation and more. He introduced the legislation because a friend of his experienced a substantial health improvement after trying one of these non-science based therapies. Essentially, an entire branch of the NIH was founded on an anecdote.
What’s worse is that after a decade of careful analysis of these alternative therapies, science has shown that not a single one of them appears to be efficacious beyond placebo. One would think that Senator Harkin would be embarrassed by the colossal waste of tax payer resources spent on this pet project of his. But no, instead he chastises the scientists who did the research, saying that they had failed to do their job of “validating” the therapeutic modalities. Wow. I guess he was never interested in finding out the truth about what works and what doesn’t – because when objective analysis reveals that these modalities don’t work, then the science must be flawed.
Now don’t get me wrong – healthy eating, regular exercise, emotional and psychological support are critical factors in good healthcare, and I fully believe that America needs to become a “wellness culture” in order to prevent chronic diseases and improve quality of life. I also believe that Americans are often over-treated and over-medicated when lifestyle interventions might be their best treatment option. However, in encouraging behavior modifications, we don’t need to foist placebo therapies on them under the banner of science. The problem with “integrative medicine” is that it takes some good medical principles and infuses them with scientifically debunked and outdated systems of thought (debunked repeatedly by NCCAM, the very scientific body that Harkin hoped would validate them.)
What we really need to do is stop splitting the practice of medicine into “integrative” vs “non-integrative” and simply follow scientifically vetted best practices. Patients need a comprehensive approach to their health, a medical home with a good primary care physician coordinating their care, reliable health information to support their decision-making, a strategy to eat well and exercise regularly, and mental health services as needed.
Senator Harkins’ plan to continue flogging the alternative medicine “dead horse” is not helpful – it’s not good science, and it’s not a good way to spend our tax dollars. I can only hope that one of the positive effects of Comparative Clinical Effectiveness Research will be to put an end to the promotion of the ineffective therapies that Harkin fervently hoped would be validated. I also hope that the new Federal Coordinating Council will not support funding to pet projects that are founded upon anecdotes, pseudoscience, and wishful thinking. Now more than ever we need good science underpinning our healthcare spending, and we need informed scientists advising our government on priorities for America’s health.
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Addendum:
More outrage from the medical blogosphere over Harkin’s views:
1. Dr. David Gorski: Senator Tom Harkin: “Disappointed” that NCCAM hasn’t “validated” more CAM
2. Dr. Peter Lipson: Harkin’s War On Science
